Postcards Home by Neil David Mitchell (LANDMARKS Series)

Postcards Home
by Neil David Mitchell

Bones of the brother
brought to Christ;
martyrdom stories
come to life.
*
Fifty-two types
of icy feast;
twice Tom Morris
rests in peace.
*
Ping of the oldest
swings in town;
castles of sand
built up, washed down.
*
Sprint like Liddell
or take a seat;
Swilken Burn bridge
is crossed by feet.
*
From east, west shorelines
surfboards speed;
sniper gulls glint
their beady-eyed greed…

PHOTO: St. Andrews Old Course, fairway and stone bridge on hole 18 (Fife, Scotland) by Seevanzz, used by permission.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Old Course at St Andrews is considered the oldest golf course in the world and commonly known as “The Home of Golf.” First played on the Links at St Andrews in the early 15th century, golf became increasingly popular in Scotland until 1457, when James II of Scotland banned the game because he felt that young men were playing too much golf instead of practicing archery. The restrictions remained in force until 1502, when James IV became a golfer and removed the ban.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem is taken from a series of poems called St. Andrews Days which appears in my recent collection Seasonal Lines. I tried to create little snapshots of everyday life mixed with some of the history of the town, during a trip to the “Home of Golf” on the east coast of Scotland.

PHOTO: The author at Swilken Burn Bridge, 18th hole, St Andrews Old Course (2008).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Neil David Mitchell, from Glasgow, Scotland, writes poetry, prose and music, as well as balancing the challenging and wonderful roles of being a High School English Teacher, a husband and a father. He recently published his first collection of poems Seasonal Lines. His further adventures can be followed on Twitter @ndsnigh or at his Amazon author page.

Killin by Graham Wood (LANDMARKS Series)

Killin
For Anne, David, Kim and James Gray
by Graham Wood

Here the centuries run like seconds, skies of cloud
and countless suns scud in time-lapse overhead.
Long swathes of time etch their histories
on the hillsides, the stones of the river bed…
This valley gouged by ice felt one day
the thaw begin, grew gradually green, inhabited —
and echoes now this summer
with the bleating of black-faced sheep.
When did the last ice melt away and the glacier
leave its footprint here, this small deep loch
holding in silence its complement of brown trout
and the elusive char? Such questions disappear
in the wind at night through Henry’s wood,
or dissolve in the brown water rounding old stones,
the river’s slow revenge on glacial imprisonment.
Here the summer dark is brief and light,
laughter and stories dance together in the Lodge …
but in Winter, if the mood is right,
the ice will reassert itself and whip
the length of glen to gale, from the blind
face of Strone to Garrogie’s spruce towers.
Each winter brings this inkling back of what
once was, a cold hackling in the early dark
of how things were for time beyond remembering.

© Graham Wood

First published in The Scottish Banner, Vol 43 Number 6 (December 2019), an international Scottish newspaper.

PHOTO: Loch Killin in the Scottish Highlands, with Monadhliath Mountains in the background. Photo by Tosca Weijers, used by permission.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem was written for good friends after a holiday stay with them near Loch Killin, a small loch in the Monadhliath Mountains of Scotland. It is near the southern end of Loch Ness and not to be confused with another place also named Killin, a village near Loch Tay. The poem celebrates the glacial origins of the glen in which the loch is located, and the fact that on some days in Winter it is impossible to escape the memory of the ice. The poem began in the Summer of the holiday but was completed on return home to Australia. In any season, the glen and the loch display the stark beauty characteristic of the Scottish Highlands.

PHOTO: The poet high up looking down on the glen and river of Killin in the Scottish Highlands.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Graham Wood resides in the northern suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, but prefers to live in poetry whenever he can. His poems have been published in a range of Australian and international journals and anthologies. He is currently working on a collection of his poems and looks forward to the day when poets achieve the recognition Shelley gave them as the true “legislators of the world.” One of his poems (“Picking Up the Sun”) is included in the recent Vita Brevis anthology Pain and Renewal (USA, 2019).

Phantas-magoric by Clive Collins (LANDMARKS Series)

Phantasmagoric
by Clive Collins

A monument’s a solid thing of stone and metal made to define an age, defy the ages. My monument, the one I speak of here, is formed from less tangible tissue: memory, dream, hallucination.

In Edinburgh once, during a two-year long moment of confused foolishness, I sought freedom from my demons in the streets. On one of my walks I got lost. It was late in the afternoon. The day was already gathering. I was in an area completely strange to me. Where I should have turned back, I kept walking.

Eventually, I came upon what has recreated itself ever since in my dreams.  Narrow sloping streets, cobbled, banked with tall stone tenements. A church that split the way before me, posing left or right. The downward slope grew ever steeper. Afraid, I questioned the sense in what I was about. In front of me reared of a sudden a monumental stone gateway, the same grey-sooted stone as the buildings that pressed in from either side.

Beyond that, well, memory sings; more cobblestones, more buildings, these with half-basements occupied entirely by junk shops whose contents spilled out onto the basement steps or, seemingly, climbed the walls. A shop sign to my left read “Madame Doubtfire’s.”

I thought I’d lost both sense and way. Looking behind me, the last of the day’s light made the dreadful gate I’d passed through loom up dark against the sky.

How I found my road back, I do not know. I did, although in many ways I did not. A marriage died. A probable career deserted me. Now, in my dreams, when I am walking city streets, they are those streets. And always in this dreamscape I see that gateway in silhouette against a black-clouded sky, monument to myself: monument and folly.

PHOTO: “Old entrance to Stockbridge Market, Edinburgh, Scotland” by Macumba (2005).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: Memory is deception, of ourselves mostly, but of others too if we choose to air memory’s fabrications. The Stockbridge area of Edinburgh where I became lost in 1973 is not the place that so often forms the backdrop to my dreams or is remembered here.  But I did see “Madame Doubtfire’s” on that walk, the shop long predating the novel and the film.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Born in Leicester, England, Clive Collins has spent the greater part of his life working as a teacher in Ireland, Sierra Leone, and Japan. He is the author of two novels, The Foreign Husband (Marion Boyars) and Sachiko’s Wedding (Marion Boyars/Penguin Books). Misunderstandings, a collection of short stories, was joint-winner of the Macmillan Silver PEN Award in 1994. More recently, his work has appeared in online journals such as Penny, Cecile’s Writers, The Story Shack, and terrain.org. He was a short-listed finalist in the 2009 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.  Carried Away and Other Stories is available from Red Bird Chap Books.

Swing by Roy Moller (Me, as a Child Poetry Series)

SWING
by Roy Moller

About the time they brought me home
from the ward of the Church
and the horn-rimmed nurse,
youthful Henry John Burnett
went plummeting through a trapdoor
on new gallows at Craiginches:
the last man to swing on
judicial rope in Scotland.

I fell through the rest of the decade;
the panoramic palimpsest
of Edinburgh swung me
in and out of the realisation
the city was cast more solid than me,
was visited by my adopted existence,
was casual, always, to my vexations.
Now I’ve grown into that notion.

Throughout the sixties an honesty plant
was strung like rope the length of the stairs
that bore my stomping tantrums
which amplified as I started to bristle,
amplified as I rummaged and rustled
through drawers and files for identity
as I was pinioned and made ready
to dangle through adolescence.

AUTHOR’S NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPH: This is a photo of me at age five with my friend Susan in her back garden (Edinburgh, Scotland, 1968). I look quite innocent here, and I was.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: This poem came into being when I realised that the date in August 1963 of the last man being hanged in Scotland was around the time I would have been brought home from the adoption ward of the Church of Scotland after five or so weeks as Baby Jamie Hoffman to became Roy Moller for the rest of my life. I have felt quite stateless throughout my life, probably stemming from my adoption, and in early adolescence I tried to find out more about where I came from and obtained some details including my original name. I tried to trace my family bloodline but was too young to really go about it properly. The images of swinging and dangling come from my feelings of lack of control of my own identity, feelings which persist in me today.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Roy Moller is a poet and songwriter from Edinburgh living in Dunbar, Scotland, whose first collection, Imports, was published late last year by Appletree Writers’ Press. In 2014, his  musical about growing up under the influence of Lou Reed was presented at the Edinburgh Fringe and his album of the show’s songs later gained a 10/10 review from Louder Than War magazine. Most recently he was asked to write and perform a poem for A Celebration of Nina Simone at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. Visit him at roymoller.com.

Windy Nights, poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

WINDY NIGHTS
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Whenever the moon and stars are set,
            Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
            A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?
 
Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
            And ships are tossed at sea,
By, on the highway, low and loud,
            By at the gallop goes he.
By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again. 

PAINTING: “Windy Night” by Marilyn Jacobson, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

NOTE: A fascinating project about Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) is currently in the works — a film about his life in San Francisco, with a screenplay by G.E. Gallas. Find out more at gegallas.wordpress.com.

Windy Nights, poem by Robert Louis Stevenson

WINDY NIGHTS
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Whenever the moon and stars are set,
            Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
            A man goes riding by.
Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?
 
Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
            And ships are tossed at sea,
By, on the highway, low and loud,
            By at the gallop goes he.
By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again. 

PAINTING: “Windy Night” by Marilyn Jacobson, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at fineartamerica.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE: A fascinating project about Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) is currently in the works — a film about his life in San Francisco, with a screenplay by G.E. Gallas. Find out more at gegallas.wordpress.com.

Found Photo, Kaleidoscopes, and The Three Graces

I am a fan of found photos — and love looking at these vintage shots for the clothing, the furnishings, the food, and the decor. Regarding the found photo above, the “finder,” whitewall buick, states on Flickr.com: “Found photo, three girls with kaleidoscopes , mid-1960s.”

Sir David Brewster — an inventor from Scotland — stumbled upon what came to be known as the kaleidoscope when he was conducting experiments on light polarization in 1815. (Hang on, everybody, just two more years until the big kaleidoscope bicentennial in 2015). Taken from Greek root words, the literal definition of kaleidoscope is “observer of beautiful forms.”

I like to think that these three little girls enjoyed some lasting effects from this innocent summer pastime — and made a habit of observing beautiful forms.

Though faded, this found photo is loaded with information — starting with the girls’ adorable outfits: Miss Polka Dots, Miss Sailor Blouse, and Miss Lady Blue. Then there’s mom’s leather pocketbook and Jackie Kennedy sunglasses in the left-hand portion. We’ve got us some Kellogg’s Sugar Smacks and a Fiestaware pink pitcher in the center, and a vintage milk carton on the right-hand side.

I think of this trio of 1960s girls as what the ancient Greeks called The Three Graces (charm, beauty, and creativity). We are charmed watching these young ladies observe beauty in their kaleidoscopes — and feel certain this humble invention ignited a creative spark in all three.

Painting: “The Three Graces” by Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)

Found Photo, Kaleidoscopes, and The Three Graces

I have been on a found photo kick lately — I really love looking at these vintage shots for the clothing, the furnishings, the food, and the decor. Regarding the found photo above, the “finder,” whitewall buick, states on Flickr.com: “Found photo, three girls with kaleidoscopes , mid-1960s.”

Sir David Brewster — an inventor from Scotland — stumbled upon what came to be known as the kaleidoscope when he was conducting experiments on light polarization in 1815. (Hang on, everybody, just three more years until the big kaleidoscope bicentennial in 2015). Taken from Greek root words, the literal definition of kaleidoscope is “observer of beautiful forms.”

I like to think that these three little girls enjoyed some lasting effects from this innocent summer pass-time — and made a habit of observing beautiful forms.

Though faded, this found photo is loaded with information — starting with the girls’ adorable outfits: Miss Polka Dots, Miss Sailor Blouse, and Miss Lady Blue. Then there’s mom’s leather pocketbook and Jackie Kennedy sunglasses in the left-hand portion. We’ve got us some Kellogg’s Sugar Smacks and a Fiestaware pink pitcher in the center, and a vintage milk carton on the right-hand side.

I think of this trio of 1960s girls as what the ancient Greeks called The Three Graces (charm, beauty, and creativity). We are charmed watching these young ladies observe beauty in their kaleidoscopes — and feel certain this humble invention ignited a creative spark in all three.

Painting: “The Three Graces” by Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510)